The days when simply using the Daleks was a licence to print money are
thankfully long since past, but they remain a key part of the iconography
of the series and it's inevitable that (legal issues notwithstanding) any
new manifestation of Doctor Who will feature them sooner or later.
One of the gratifying things about Big Finish's output is that they waited
to establish their credentials before doing so; another is that they
created such a good vehicle for the Daleks' latest comeback.

The Daleks are the stars of Genocide Machine. They're treated
with intelligence, style, and a good deal of respect. The Emperor Dalek's
cameo is startlingly effective, giving a real impression of maniacal
arrogance and low cunning. They work unexpectedly well on audio: subtle
variations in vocal effects mean that the listener never loses track of
exactly who's talking, and BF deploy all the sound effects guaranteed to
quicken the fannish pulse - the 80s ray-gun discharge, and most notably
the 'electronic heartbeat'.

If anything, Mike Tucker's script seems more inspired by David
Whitaker's handling of the Daleks than Terry Nation's. The Emperor's
appearance aside, these Daleks are strategists, rather than the frenzied
psychotics of later stories. They have plans and agendas and are at times
startlingly devious. There's a direct tip of the hat to the 'human' Daleks
of Evil... in the latter part of the story.

Beyond the Daleks, the story is never less than neat and there's an
imaginative conceit in the last couple of episodes which, although heavily
hinted at throughout the story, took me by surprise completely. The music
is suitably ominous to begin with, adding a lot to a surprisingly
atmospheric setting. Sylvester McCoy and Sophie Aldred turn in typically
solid performances (although Aldred's turn in a dual role leaves a little
to be desired).

There are flaws, however. One of the supporting characters bears such
a striking resemblence to Benny Summerfield that one has to wonder exactly
why BF chose to leave her out of the story - as it is she's
Benny-in-all-but-name. There's a running joke about an often-present,
never-heard character that's fairly funny for the first episode but drags
on for most of the story, and it's knowing jokiness jars badly with the
seriousness of the main plot.

But these are minor considerations. Big Finish are proving themselves
all-rounders at the recreation of DW on CD - having mastered the
pseudo-historical, the SF drama, the contemporary-Earth-in-peril, and the
full-blown historical, they've now made an impressive debut in the SF
action-adventure stakes, a genre lending itself less well to audio. This
would have been an impressive story even without the Daleks - more than
can be said for so many of their TV appearances.

Dalek Empire: The Genocide Machine was a solid story that was
very nicely done. I suppose the thing I appreciated about it most of all
was the absence of Davros. Don't get me wrong...I love the character of
Davros. But ever since his first appearance in Genesis of
the Daleks, there wasn't a single televised Dalek episode that didn't
revolve around him. (I had hoped that Rememberance of the
Daleks was going to break this streak, but there he goes and pops up
in the last episode....)

In my mind, the Daleks should have an intelligent sort of menace to
them. I liked the fear they evoked in the prison ship crew of Resurection of the Daleks, and have always wanted to see
more of that. Unfortunately, too many of the Dalek episodes tended to be
just a little too silly. Fortunately, Genocide Machine gets it
right. The Daleks are seen as efficient, calculating, ruthless, and worthy
of our scorn and contempt.

Once again, McCoy and Aldred put in fantastic performances as the
Doctor and Ace. But after The Fearmonger, I'd really
come to expect this. I also found Chief Librarian Elgin convincing, as I
did find myself disliking him at the end for all the right reasons. The
running gag with Praxx, who never speaks, was a bit of a letdown. I was
waiting for the one moment when he was going to get to say something, and
I was expecting his one sentence to turn the story on its edge. Alas, this
never came to pass.

There is one aspect about this story that I especially liked...the use
of situations that would have been visually boring but were auditorially
very intriguing. There is one instance where someone becomes disembodied.
Not a visually exciting scene. (Think of the Doctor in the Matrix in Arc of Infinity.) But auditorially, there was a lot
going on. The same was true for the way in which the Kar-Charrat Phantoms
were done. Audio 10, Visual 3. Much like the whole premise of Whispers of Terror, this was a great choice for Big
Finish because it was something audio could do better than video.

I have only two complaints, and they're both minor.

I have started
to notice that when there are scenes with lots of action, I lose track
of what's happening. For example, Ace might have a gun, then you hear
somebody else burst into the room, then there's a struggle and some explosion
noise and I find myself thinking "Does Ace have the gun? Was Ace just
shot? Who just burst into the room? Was he/she shot?" I often have to
wait 30 to 60 seconds before I really find out what just happened, which
rarely happens in a televised episode. I think Big Finish could stand
to sharpen the writing and/or production to make these moments easier
to follow.

There were a few times where the Dalek voices were a bit too similar
for me to keep track of who was saying what. In general, who really cares
if there were two Daleks discussing the situation or three? Dalek conversations
do tend to be a bit like listening to someone talk to himself. But, for
the most part they used Daleks with significantly different pitches,
and I wish they had gotten this right all the way through.

Kicking off a story arc (if it can be called that), The Genocide
Machine sees the return of Doctor Who`s Perennial villains in
the Daleks. Big Finish do not include Davros; a wise move. This allows
the Daleks to return to their scheming ways to good effect. Unfortunately,
the story still feels too traditional; as if the Daleks haven`t been
brought into the year 2000. This also means that the story is somewhat
simple, Daleks invade planet, capture Ace, seek out all powerful
device/weapon (delete where appropiate), Doctor is double crossed and
eventually defeats the Daleks. This may be harsh, but it does sum up what
happens basically.

Sylvester McCoy and Sophie Aldred seem to be going through the motions,
and Bruce Montague is irritating. The sound effects are impressive though,
complete with the Dalek "heartbeat" and their voices spot on. The
Genocide Machine is perfect for listeners looking for a slice of
nostalgia, but those expecting something special will be disappointed.

I wanted to write this review to address the balance of the previous
ones. They appear between them to describe the story as average, when it
is by far the best yet that I've heard from Big Finish.

This is my first taste of a proper McCoy story as I haven't listened to
The Fearmonger. Sylvester and Sophie recapture their
characters with effortless ease. There performances are indeed astounding.
All of the guest characters come across well and the running gag mentioned
during a previous review is very funny.

The Daleks are brilliant and spend the majority of the story plotting
and scheming. Indeed where brute force is used in The
Apocalypse Element, here it is the devious side that is portrayed.

The best aspect of the story however is the setting. Indeed Mike Tucker
has a history of good settings, with Kar-Charrat being the best. The
effects by Big Finish convey that we are on a jungle planet that rains is
excellent. The library and the other setting are also imaginative.

The Daleks are back, and they are terrific. After the very average
attempts by the books (War of the Daleks and Legacy of the Daleks) they are back to prominence
– exactly where they should be in the DW universe.

The Daleks succeeded on TV largely due to their look. Visually they are
impressive. Audibly they are impressive too, as this audio adventure
shows. With the help of the sound wizards from Big finish they are superb,
frightening and authoritarian. They reek of conquest, a relentless pursuit
of power. They are supplemented with sound effects we associate with them
(eg. the heartbeat of the control room).

The soundtrack too is impressive. Atmospheric music, weird and
wonderful sound effects. There are more water sound effects than you can
believe possible as gulps, glugs and drips abound. The depiction of a
rainforest is a standout here. The constant rain providing the backdrop
for much of the action – giving the whole production a claustrophic
feel. The 7th Doctor is ideal for this environment – that Umbrella
comes in very useful!

The 7th Doctor and Ace are brilliant. Clearly thriving on a story they
can get their teeth into. Sophie Aldred is impressive in all her guises in
this. Sylvestor McCoy exudes the mysterious Timelord, and it’s
refreshing to find the Doctor having no idea where the story is going!

The supporting characters are pretty good too. Best of these is Elgin
– the chief Librarian. . A man who can’t stand things out of
place. Rather a lonely figure is portrayed, and despite his failings, you
can’t help but feel sorry for him. Bev Tarrant is very Bennyesque,
nice to see strong female leads. Also notable are the Phantoms of
Kar-Charrat – very spooky indeed these.

The story is interesting. The wetworks facility being a fascinating
concept – realized very well by Big Finish. The planet Kar-Charrat
is the stories main triumph though. A magnificent environment is created
complete with rainforests, ancient Ziggurat and invisible Library. A tour
de force for the imagination.

Overall this is great Doctor Who. Of the futuristic stories it
is definitely the best (I’ve listened to them all up to 16, the 1st
McGann one). 9/10.

A quick look at Mike Tucker's writing credentials suggests he's
something of a specialist in Seventh Doctor-and-Ace stories. Which is a
good thing, since this could have been a very, very silly story.

The Primary setting is an invisible library in the middle of a
rainforest.

The Doctor spending a good chunk of the story unconcious and
immobile.
As has been pointed out, if this had been a TV story, it wouldn't have made
for very exciting viewing. Good thing it's not.....

You know those diagrams they show you in Grade school to teach you
about
condensation and precipitation? The life-cycle of a raindrop? where the
individual raindrop has big cartoon eyes and a warm smile? Yeah? It turns
out that was true all along-the raindrops are alive and from outer space.
and you DON'T want to make them angry.

Two words: Evil Ace.

Add to this the Daleks, who ever since the seventies, have been a bit of a
double-edged sword. They certainly have the ability to be an imposing,
chilling menace. But at this point, they have a lot of baggage that they
bring with them, that anyone who attempts to write a new chapter in the
'Dalek Empire' as this CD proudly trumpets, will have to deal with. Some
attempts at keeping the Daleks vital and menacing have been....mixed at
best. (See War of the Daleks)

Mike Tucker, bless him, ignores all that baggage. Davros is nowhere to
be found. Skaro? Well....it's out there somewhere. From the moment the
first mechanical Dalek voice crackles out of the speakers, you know that
Tucker's Daleks mean business. They want what's in the Library, and
they're not going to let any silly little things like continuity or canon
bog them down. It is the Daleks that set the tone of this story, charging
ahead with all guns blazing (so to speak) and the non-Daleks rise to the
occasion as well, keeping the first episode more or less light-hearted in
tone, and with a sense of wonder (an invisible library in the rainforest!
Cor!) that the intensity as events progress feels natural, not forced. and
it makes it much easier to suspend disbelief in the Phantoms.

The Machine of the title is also a fairly clever twist on the
traditional Doomsday Weapon.

But if the script is the bulk of this rich, filling cake, its the
technical details that make up the icing. Big Finish seem to have a
reputation for evocative atmosphere and F/X, and on the basis of my
experience so far, I'd have to agree. the ever-present sounds of water,
and the whispering voices of the 'Phantoms' as they reveal themselves are
especially effective.

And Sophie Aldred has an effective dual performance that adds to the
sense of menace.

I could go on and on about this Audio, but It's hard to be objective. I
enjoyed Spectre of Lanyon Moor, but I devoured this.
Looking back at the ingredients, it could have been a travesty, but
everything worked perfectly. So far, Big Finish has given me two
completely enjoyable Dr. Who stories, and for that I applaud them.

Oh dear. It, um... it had Daleks in it, for a start. I'm still not sure
whether the Daleks are the worst monsters for audio, because of their
irritating voices, or the best, because their habit of narrating their
every action and circumstance actually helps in an audio ("My casing is
filling with water! I am being drowned!") Plenty of crap plotting here,
though the regulars turn in decent performances, and it's fundamentally a
boring runaround. The Daleks' desire to get faster download speed of all
the knowledge in the universe was sort of unintentionally humorous,
though. I kept thinking of Daleks screaming, "We-need-broadband!
The-secrets-of-Napster-will-soon-be-ours!"

The 1990s had been a relatively poor decade for the Daleks in new
Doctor Who fiction. Although they appeared in a good Doctor Who
Magazine comic strip, Emperor of the Daleks (DWM # 197-202), this
was balanced by their weak use in Fire and
Brimstone (#251-255). Elsewhere they were ill served by the novels.
Despite initial hopes, Virgin were unable to secure the use of the Daleks.
Then along came the BBC with War of the Daleks, the
less said about the better, and Legacy of the
Daleks, whose main plus point is that it doesn't rewrite a
decade's worth of continuity. Meanwhile on television the Daleks had
suffered the fate of rights not being available that stopped them
appearing in Dimensions in Time and the TV Movie, leaving just their appearance in Doctor Who and the Curse of Fatal Death which veered
into the send-up territory. It was a gloomy period... and then along came
Big Finish.

At first there were fears that Big Finish too would be unable to obtain
the Daleks, but then came the announcement that they had, along with
confirmation that they would not use Davros and so allow the Daleks to
stand dominant in their own right. We were promised a return to the glory
days of Dalek power and so the Dalek Empire stories were awaited in
anticipation.

The Genocide Machine lives up to some though not all of these
predictions. The story takes place on a single planet with only occasional
communications with the wider Dalek forces, so this is not quite the
galactic spanning power yet, but as further Dalek releases were promised,
this point does not seem to matter. The Daleks that we see are shown as
cunning, ruthless, determined, patient and powerful all in the same story,
with their plan to capture the knowledge of the library coming across as
realistic even though they are waiting a long time to achieve it.
Throughout the story there is a real sense of strength as the Daleks
attack and they are only ultimately defeated because their existing
knowledge was deficient. For the most part this demonstrates a clear
return to the height of the original Terry Nation stories, though some
elements from those days could be left out, such as the duplication
technology. There's a tradition in Doctor Who for a duplicate to
lose all acting ability and here it happens with Sophie Aldred who plays
Ace's duplicate as though she's just reading out the lines, making it
difficult to believe that the duplicate fools anyone. It's also hard to
swallow that the Daleks easily accept the real Ace impersonating her
duplicate later on.

Unlike many of the McCoy stories on television, the Doctor is thrust
into a situation about which he knows little and visits Kar-Charrat purely
out of the blue when he discovers he has some library books to return.
This makes me wonder if the story wasn't originally conceived with another
Doctor in mind, since it's hard to believe that the McCoy Doctor would
know so little about the environment. One aspect of the story that does
show her roots is Bev Tarrant (another homage to Terry Nation's work) who
feels so much like Bernice Summerfield that one almost regrets that Big
Finish didn't opt to bring her into the Doctor Who range at this
stage anyway. Both Lousie Faulkner (Bev) and Bruce Montague (Elgin) give
good performances that bring their chaacters to life, though Nicholas'
Briggs' Prink simply doesn't work as a character who is always about to
speak but doesn't until his final scene - a character gag that just
doesn't work for me. The Dalek voices are given a strong modulation that
makes them sound definitely sinister rather than the light weight efforts
in some of the television stories (e.g. Day of the
Daleks). The end result is a good story in its own right which
launches the Daleks in style and gives strong hope for future Dalek Empire
stories. 8/10

I can't afford most of the Big Finish Audios and instead try to buy the
odd one or two reccommended by friends or by reviews I've read. The
Genocide Machine gets a fair amount of positive and negative comment
from Who fans. From me though, it is totally positive feedback.

Sylvester McCoy is in his element as the Doctor and Sophie Aldred is
more convincing as Ace than she ever was in the TV series. The Daleks
adapt well to audio too and the supporting cast is very good. The plot is
not a particularly unfamiliar one in Who terms, but there are
enough twists and turns in the plot to keep anyone interested and is an
overall triumph for writer Mike Tucker who has also written several good
seventh Doctor books in the BBC series.

The Daleks at their very best and a triumph of writing and acting. What
more could you want from a Doctor Who story? Almost perfect.
9/10.